Famous Quotes & Sayings

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Government originated in the attempt to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and property of each with the common force of all.

Jessica Lange

Yes, and you should question your government.

Jeremy Bentham

No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.

Jeremy Bentham

Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.

Jeremy Bentham

Among the several cloudy appellatives which have been commonly employed as cloaks for misgovernment, there is none more conspicuous in this atmosphere of illusion than the word Order.

Jeremy Bentham

Without publicity, no good is permanent; under the auspices of publicity, no evil can continue.

Jeremy Bentham

All government is a trust. Every branch of government is a trust, and immemorially acknowledged to be so.

Jennifer Dunn

Only with our government are you given a certificate at birth, a license at marriage, and a bill at death.

Jeff Sessions

Those policies - more taxes, more regulation, more debt, more spending, more government - will make American worse. It just will, in my view.

Jeff Sessions

You're not supposed to be admitted to America if you're likely to be a charge on the public - if you're going to need government aid to take care of yourself ... It [2006 immigration bill] failed because it did not do what it said it would do... End the illegality first. Then we can wrestle with how to treat compassionately people who have been in America for a long time.

Grover Norquist

I want to reduce the size of government in half as a percentage of GNP [gross national product] over the next 25 years. We want to reduce the number of people depending on government so there is more autonomy and more free citizens.

Grover Norquist

Look, the center right coalition in American politics today is best understood as a coalition of groups and individuals that on the issue that brings them to politics what they want from the government is to be left alone.

Grover Norquist

The question is: How do we reduce spending from 25% of GDP, which is where Obama put us? The focus is on total government spending. Can we bring it down, in a reasonable and politically acceptable way? That's what the Paul Ryan plan does. It puts us on a gradual reform path to reducing the size of government.

Grover Norquist

Government should enforce rule of law. It should enforce contracts, it should protect people bodily from being attacked by criminals. And when the government does those things, it is facilitating liberty. When it goes beyond those things, it becomes destructive to both human happiness and human liberty.

Grover Norquist

The goal is to reduce the size and scope of government spending, not to focus on the deficit. The deficit is the symptom of the disease.

Grover Norquist

One of the reasons some of the advocates of ever larger government and more government intrusiveness get nervous about discussions of the actual cost of government is that they fear if the people had a discussion about what government costs, the true cost of taxes, that they might not want as much government as they are presently getting.

Grover Norquist

Less government, less regulation, lower taxes.

Grover Norquist

My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit. Because that person doesn't need the goddamn government for anything,

Grover Norquist

I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

Grover Cleveland

Communism is a hateful thing, and a menace to peace and organized government.

Grover Cleveland

Once the coffers of the federal government are opened to the public, there will be no shutting them again.

Grover Cleveland

The admitted right of a government to prevent the influx of elements hostile to its internal peace and security may not be questioned, even where there is not treaty stipulation on the subject.

Grover Cleveland

Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters. Not only is their time and labor due to the government, but they should scrupulously avoid in their political action, as well as in the discharge of their official duty, offending by a display of obtrusive partisanship their neighbors who have relations with them as public officials.

Grover Cleveland

Under our scheme of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen.

Grover Cleveland

The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their government, its functions do not include the support of the people.

Grover Cleveland

He mocks the people who proposes that the government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor.

Grover Cleveland

In the scheme of our national government, the presidency is preeminently the people's office.

Grover Cleveland

A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.

Grover Cleveland

Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people.

Golda Meir

The Soviet government is the most realistic regime in the world - no ideals.

Gideon Welles

It is vain to expect a well-balanced government without a well-balanced society.

Gerald Celente

The greatest fears that governments have are freedom of speech and exposing the corruptness, the ineptitude, and the double dealing going on that they don’t want the public knowing about.